Yankees win battle of bullpens in World Series Game 4 to stave off elimination vs. Dodgers

Game 4 of the World Series came down to a battle of the bullpens.

That served the Yankees well.

The five relievers used by the Yankees in their 11-4 win in the Bronx significantly outpitched the four relievers deployed by the Dodgers, which proved pivotal on a night Los Angeles resorted to a bullpen game without an available starting pitcher.

Tim Hill, Clay Holmes, Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver and Tim Mayza combined to hurl five scoreless innings and limit Los Angeles’ loaded lineup to one hit as the Yankees staved off elimination.

“Sometimes you get the right sequencing and you just have a good night,” Weaver said. “The confidence is there and you have the momentum. It makes it a little more dialed [in]. Tonight, I hope, is not an outlier, but it’s one that we appreciate.”

That bullpen excellence came in support of rookie Yankees starter Luis Gil, who surrendered four runs in four-plus innings.

Holmes, Leiter and Weaver combined to strike out seven of 10 batters from the sixth to eighth innings — a stretch in which the Yankees’ lead ballooned from 5-4 to 11-4.

The bullpen loomed particularly large in the top of the seventh, when the Yankees led by two runs. With one out and a runner on second base, Leiter struck out Shohei Ohtani and Weaver struck out Mookie Betts to extinguish the Dodgers’ final scoring threat.

Leiter warmed up as early as the second inning Tuesday but did not enter until the seventh.

“That’s a really hard thing to do in general, and in the regular season it’s a really difficult task to kind of be locked [in] from the first pitch of the game on,” Leiter said.

“But I do believe that the playoffs present a different aspect, where you’re expecting that a little more, because every inning could be the leverage inning, every moment could be the turning point in the game.”

Weaver also pitched a scoreless eighth, and with the Yankees down 3-0 in the best-of-seven series, the closer appeared poised to come back out for the ninth in an attempt to nail down a seven-out save.

But the Yankees scored five runs in the eighth, allowing manager Aaron Boone to remove Weaver after 21 pitches and use Mayza for the final three outs.

“I’ll be ready to go [in Wednesday night’s Game 5] with a little bit more boost, stamina, but it doesn’t matter,” Weaver said. “Regardless, we’ve got to be ready to go.”

The Dodgers, meanwhile, have operated with only three starting pitchers all postseason after injuries to Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw and others ravaged their rotation.

All four of the relievers the Dodgers used Tuesday — Ben Casparius, Daniel Hudson, Landon Knack and Brent Honeywell — allowed at least one run. Hudson surrendered a go-ahead grand slam to Anthony Volpe in the third inning, while the Yankees tagged Honeywell for five runs in the eighth.

“It’s the war of attrition sometimes,” Boone said of the Dodgers’ bullpen game. “That’s how they’ve had to do it. They’ve had, obviously, a number of guys get hurt, which, credit to them, they’ve gotten creative and worked some things out, figured some things out to the point they’re playing for a world championship.”

With the score becoming lopsided late, the Dodgers avoided using high-leverage relievers including Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, Alex Vesia and Anthony Banda.

“We knew it was a bullpen game,” manager Dave Roberts said of Tuesday’s loss. “As far as outcomes, to have six guys in your pen that are feeling good, rested, I feel good about that.”